A reader writes:
It is probably because I am a lawyer, but I am incredibly disturbed by your (and others in the media) conflagration of fact, rumor, anger and certitude. Most of the time I can excuse this because the issues are (relatively) more trivial. But, as we all recognize, there is nothing trivial about the ongoing matters at Penn State. You wrote:
As one reader noted, if a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry had been found in the showers buggering a ten-year-old, the cops would have been called immediately. But an assistant coach and likely successor to the great Paterno? Immune.
This statement is provocative and yet false. In 2002, when the events identified in the Grand Jury Report took place, Sandusky was a former assistant and had no chance of succeeding Paterno.
There is this assumption in all of your writing (and that of many, many others) that Paterno and the administrators at Penn State acted the way they did to protect the football program because it is "sacred". However, when you take a step back this makes no sense. If the goal was to protect the football program you would turn Sandusky in immediately. As your former colleague Megan McArdle wrote, the biggest mystery in this matter, so far, is why no one at Penn State reported the 2002 incident since it was clearly in the best interest of the football program and the university to do so. This is also where any comparison with the Catholic Church diverges. It's plain to see why the Catholic Church would cover up abuse for the sake of self-preservation, both individually and institutionally. The same simply cannot be said for Penn State.
Now, you may wish to take the position that the reason this was not reported in 2002 was because there is some deeper, sinister conspiracy that was going on, such as that suggested by Mark Madden or by you yourself. You wrote: "It is beginning to look as if many, many people in that community were prepared to allow a child rapist continue his assaults on innocent children because of the cult of a coach." What is your basis for making this statement?
I appreciate the fact that you blog real-time. But sometimes, with a topic as sensitive as this, perhaps you should take a step back and breathe deeply before you type. Today you have accused not just individuals, but an entire university and larger community of protecting a child rapist because of football. Yet you have no evidence whatsoever to support that position. There is a difference between blogging or writing about politics, or budgets, or even wars. Topics such as this require greater restraint, thought, and, most importantly, facts.
So let me correct that. Sandusky was an assistant coach and once likely successor to Paterno. I don't think it changes the point. Sandusky was in in the inner sanctum. He was one of them. Because he was one of them, his grotesque abuses did not seem to grotesque. Loyalty, friendship, the bonds of sports … all probably contributed to the decision to fire him (traumatic enough) but not to send him to the cops. You and Megan are missing the psychological impact of being worshipped and immune in a community, and all the corruption that comes from that.It was surely, rationally, in the Catholic Church's interests to report all these things immediately. Look what damage it has subsequently done. But authoritarian insitutions, based on religion and cults, are not guided by reason, but by emotion.
Knowing, as they did, that he had created access to countless other troubled kids makes it all the more wicked. To my mind, Paterno needs to be prosecuted just as Ratzinger needed to be prosecuted back when he did the same thing in Munich. They are accessories to child rape. The only reason they weren't prosecuted was their status. Another reader delivers:
In another life, where I get to be a sports journalist, I would want to be Joe Posnanski. He's been working on a book about Paterno, and during this football season he's been embedded on the campus of Penn State to work on it. Naturally, everyone has been waiting for his response to the scandal, which he delivered yesterday. Reading it is like reading the wise school teacher who just wants to know the facts. And the truth. To be not only emotionally, but financially, invested in the situation must be a terrible and difficult thing, but I think he's written a beautiful appraisal of the situation. I do not envy his position, but I admire his ability to succumb to subjectivity, while ultimately promising objectivity.